


Shrivel It Up

by the merienes tranch (lilhalphys)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Temporary Character Death, Canonical Character Death, Food Poisoning, Gen, Glamour Springs Incident, SO, also im unsure whether this is technically major character death, kinda literally - Freeform, sorta? nothing in this goes against anything directly stated in canon, yeah i like that one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-03 22:44:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14006463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilhalphys/pseuds/the%20merienes%20tranch
Summary: Forty people died that day, in Glamour Springs.Or, Barry Bluejeans the human fighter knows three kinds of truths.





	1. if three is a crowd

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a "what if" scenario I cooked up this afternoon while I was thinking about stuff I guess. Hope you enjoy!

Barry Bluejeans the human fighter knows three kinds of truths.

The first is the kind of truth we all know, stuff like scattering makes the sky blue and the gods live in the Celestial Plane and getting punched in the face hurts pretty badly. Just, sorta, life facts. The kind of stuff you learn in the world from day to day or in expansive, probably-legal books 

The second comes from a coin in his pocket. It’s why he knows that he is loved by someone, by some ones, and that he alone can save them from some _thing_ . It why he knows he’s looking for the _KSSHHSSHHH, no, wait, the KSSHHS made by SSHHSSSK, fuck, a glove, I guess?_

The third kind is the most abstract, somehow. There are truths that Barry Bluejeans feels in his blood, that ring in his soul like a bell and burn him like fire. They’re faint, wisps of reality that blend into static. He feels them whenever he sees a particularly well-kept garden, or a cheap looking wooden duck on the shelf of a tourist trap selling knick knacks, or a colorfully loud and flamboyant wizard’s hat peeking up from a sprawling crowd, or the two moons hanging bright in the sky.

They’re the reason he’s bought, like, seven umbrellas that live in a box by the pod of green fluid in his room.

Barry has a lead on the mystical power his coin talks about and a meeting in a town called Glamour Springs. It takes him a while to even find the place on one of his many maps, it’s such a small town so far out of the way. He isn’t surprised; this is definitely dangerous information that he’s confident his contact isn’t entirely certain of, if the static from his coin is anything to go by.

At least, he’d assumed the sensitivity of the intel was the reason the meeting was planned so far out of the way until he’d arrived. The whole town square is decorated with levitating glass orbs held to tables with string, and a few houses have colorful banners hanging from their rafters. The air is heavy with the smell of garlic. And, and one of the banners Barry can see reads “Welcome, _Sizzle It Up: With Taako!_  

And Barry feels something, something like searing settle into his bones. 

There is a stagecoach in the center of town with a crowd of people around it, Barry’d guess around thirty, with a few more stragglers coming out from their houses to join. As he approaches, Barry is better able to make out the figure behind the stage coach. He’s an elf, shorter than most he’s known with dark skin and eyes so blue they have to be magically enhanced. His magenta hair is pulled back in a neat bun sitting nearly on top of his head.

The heat in Barry’s bones cannot name him, but when first truths see this elf cooking and see the banner once more, he realizes that this must be Taako, and that feels right, feels like the heat growing fainter and more bearable.

His meeting is in an hour. This is now. Barry can afford to watch this, to stand in this crowd and be amazed by the precision with which Taako cooks.

Something, though, is off. Something in the way Taako moves is too stiff and too loose, half of something and twice as much of another, and Barry can’t focus on anything else as Taako finishes whatever it is he is cooking and presents it to the crowd.

As others move to take samples, the truths in Barry’s head argue, as they are wont to do. The first truths say sure, this seems like a legit operation this guy is running here, good for him and all, but there’s still something off, like stale air. The second truths remind him without even saying a word of a command he gets often: _Don’t put anything anyone gives you in your mouth. Poisoning would be the worst way for you to go, for your efforts._ But, the third truth.

The third truth turns his insides to shimmering glass and says _Anything made by Taako is safe, is delicious. Can’t admit it to either of them, but it’s even better than-_

And Barry can’t go any deeper down that rabbit hole in his mind than that, can’t explain how he knows what he knows, but that’s the case for every third truth. Normally, he’d go with the majority in any situation - it’s as close to trusting his gut as he can get - but he is possessed by something as he reaches for a piece of chicken and, and it’s just so big that he cannot eat it in one bite.

And there’s a moment, when he meet’s Taako’s eyes, and he’s on fire again. Everything Barry has ever searched for, everything his second truth has talked about, is halfway in Taako’s eyes. And for just a second, Taako knits his brow. He doesn’t smile, and that hurts more than Barry can bear for reasons he can’t comprehend. He doesn’t know it yet, but all that hurt and all that confusion won’t matter in, in just a moment.

Barry Bluejeans bites into the chicken, and, for the first and last time he’ll remember, all the truths inside of him work together.

The third truth is first. The third truth is apologetic because it was wrong; this food is not safe. The third truth recognizes poison - arsenic - just as the bite of chicken slips down his throat.

The second truth is next. The second truth is the most frequent instruction from the coin, then. It may even say it out loud, for all Barry knows.

_No one can see you die. If you think you are dying, if you even suspect it, run._

And the first truth connects those ideas in a way that’s maybe kind of obvious, but, like, arsenic is a deadly fucking poison. So Barry Bluejeans runs.

Barry Bluejeans the human fighter runs from Glamour Springs as thirty nine other people fall to the ground around him, as he himself trips over his feet. His third truths burn at his eyes as he looks back over his shoulder one last time, and

The elf is gone.

Barry Bluejeans the human fighter dies at the outskirts of Glamour Springs, far enough from the commotion in the square that no one sees Barry Bluejeans the lich rise up from his corpse.

Barry Bluejeans the lich knows every truth to this reality, but three facts stand out the most to him.

The first is that he needs to collect his blood and leave. Simple enough, even routine after five long years. It’s a pain in his spectral form, but he manages.

The second is that he will never make it to his meeting. He’s confident that his contact wouldn’t be directly opposed to conversing with a lich so long as he got his cash, but he can barely afford to stay long enough to get his blood. Surely, so many deaths concentrated in one area in one moment will require the direct action of an emissary of the Raven Queen, and, quite frankly, Barry’s day is already long enough without another round of resisting ghost arrest.

The third, and Barry is guilty that this one comes third, is that something terrible has happened to Taako. To his magic, to his mind, to some or all aspects of him.

The fourth thing isn’t really a fact worth noting, at least as anything more than a fleeting thought Barry has as he flees towards his cavernous lair.

Arsenic should be a pretty damn hard thing to accidentally transmutate.


	2. then what the hell is seven?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako the elven wizard knows a lot of shit. But for the sake of like, simplicity of an argument, Taako is currently high-key aware of seven things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alt title - shrivel it up II: the shriveling
> 
> this thing wasn't meant to have a follow up, but i really wanted to write this scene, especially because I wanna nail down my Taako. hope you enjoy!

Taako the elven wizard knows a lot of shit. He’s like, kind of a big deal in the department of knowing shit. Hell, just a couple months ago, he learned a whole new fuckton of shit - compounded with the normal amount of Taako-smarts, which is already so rad - and he’s always getting better. But for the sake of like, simplicity of an argument, Taako is currently high-key aware of seven things.

  1. He is the coolest wizard to ever fuckin’ live
  2. His sister is the second coolest wizard to ever fuckin’ live
  3. Merle smells like dirt and book mold and gives shitty advice
  4. Magnus makes sweat smell like, less horrendous - though Taako may just be used to Magnus smelling like sweat - and also gives shitty advice
  5. Davenport smells like salt and fish piss but gives comparatively okay advice
  6.     1. Lucretia is known to give shitty advice
    2. He has not asked Lucretia about this, and he is not going to
  7. He’s really, really fucking guilty about Glamour Springs



That isn’t an unusual feeling, really. He felt really, really fucking guilty about it for a good six years of his life. And then he, like, didn’t. He’s over it; not his fault, not his problem, not his guilt. He’s transmuted that guilt into total chillitude.

But, yanno, he drank some fish piss and woke up in a cold sweat three months later and now he feels like dirt.

Taako has a good brain sometimes, a reliable brain with a lot of good magic in it. Taako’s brain was smart enough not to kill him with all the minutiae of what was taken from him right after he innoculated himself, but it also fuckin’ took three months to realize that he,

He _killed_ Barry.

Of the many things Taako knows, one of them is that he isn’t what most people call like, a good person.

“That isn’t true,” Barry says, almost reaching for a macaron before catching himself, “Like, maybe you don’t have the, uh, soundest moral compass, but you aren’t a bad person. Even for what - you didn’t - even if you had messed up your magic, and, and that’s what - what did it, you still wouldn’t be a bad person for it.”

“It’s different. Cause, cause it’s you, Barold.” The nickname, heavy on his tongue, doesn’t bring the levity Taako wants to the room, and that fucking sucks. He’s not used to not having full control over the emotions of a situation; Barry is too good at this.

Barry slides his glasses off his face with a sigh, absentmindedly biting on one of its arms, “I mean, that’s not-”

“You make her happy.”

Barry looks him in the eye this time as he reaches for a cookie. Taako twitches, and an invisible mage hand slaps his hand away. 

“Taako, why did you bring these?” 

He lets his fingers tap against the wood of the table upon which the box of cookies sits. He doesn’t say _It was Magnus’s shitty idea, and I regret it immensely_. 

“I’m not afraid of you, Taako.” 

In an instant, Taako’s fingernails clink softly against the table, now made of shimmering glass.

“I killed you - I killed forty people. I’m one scary motherfucker.”

“Thirty-nine,” Barry corrects, and there’s a crack and a curse when he bites down too hard on metal of his glasses.

Taako almost says _Well let me fix my math_ out of something resembling habit, knowledge that it doesn’t really matter, that it’s just a week until this cycle ends, that Lup will get a kick out of it, except. The thought of it sends bile rising up his throat, and before he knows it he hears a distinctly non-metallic crunch, and.

And it’s been years. And this is something Taako was telling himself he was over before he even knew that Glamour Springs wasn’t his fault. And he doesn’t even feel bad anymore because it's much easier to let strangers die on accident than to kill-

Barry swallows. “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s - it’s really good, and,” he reaches across the gap between the two armchairs they’re sitting in and touches Taako’s forearm, “it’s not-”

“Of course it isn’t,” Taako snaps, shifting so his own hand is grasping at Barry’s wrist, “I’m a professional.”

“I knew. I knew as soon as I swallowed it, then, like, before, and,” Taako’s grip gets tighter, “this is really good, Taako. I trust you. It’s why,” he laughs, that laugh of his that wooed Taako’s sister, “it’s why I ate that chicken in the first place. I didn’t know who you were, or, hell, who I was. Your, your cooking is just that good, stays with a guy. Don’t, uh, tell her, but I think it's better than Lup’s.”

Something sugary crumbles at the corners of Taako’s mouth, and he smiles, lets go of Barry’s wrist. “No promises, my man. Taako loves a good gloat.”

Barry finishes his cookie and smiles. “Besides, even if the cookies were, like, you know… I mean, the boss wouldn’t like it, but Clone is only like, an eighth level spell.”

Taako laughs at that, throws his head back and really gets into it. “I’m sure I could make sure he, uh, looks away while ya cast it.”

-

_Plenty of people will pretend they recognize him; he’s Taako, from TV, from Sizzle It Up. There was the one show where he offhandedly mentioned that he’d always had a faulty memory - one of the ones at Raven’s Roost, he thinks - and since then everyone and their grandma has been claiming to be his long lost husband, or uncle, or brother, or-_

_It ranges from annoying to downright insulting; what, do they think he’s the kinda guy to just forget a whole entire person? He isn’t that fuckin’ stupid._

_The last time he sees it - because duh - is in Glamour Springs. He’s seen in a hundred times now, the guy walks up to his stagecoach and the fake gasp of recognition and the widening eyes as they lock gazes, only_

_Taako sees something honest in the way the guy reacts to seeing him, some sort of sincerity there that you can’t really fake. It’s especially concerning when the guy doesn’t follow through; no “It’s so good to see you!”, no “Oh my god, Taako, it’s been years, remember when we-”_

_The guy just. Stares at him for a moment, and it’s the biggest insult to date._

_Before Taako can come up with a snide remark, the guy is already gone, and something inside of him feels simultaneously hollow and much, much fuller than before the guy met his eyes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos if you liked it/Comment if you can!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Shrivel It Up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14123943) by [TheOwlThing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOwlThing/pseuds/TheOwlThing)




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